Deer Park fire underscores why good companies plan for disasters
The fire was finally extinguished less than 24 hours later on Wednesday. But, early Thursday morning, an emergency shelter-in-place warning was issued not because of the smoke, but from dangerously high levels of the invisible, cancer-causing crude oil compound benzene that were detected just outside of Houston in Deer Park. As the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would later note, “Because the fires are no longer burning, vapor from remaining exposed chemicals can escape. The remaining product is being removed, and vapor suppression activities are continuing.”
Essentially, a day after Deer Park residents thought they could finally take in some — relatively — fresh air, an emergency started all over again without a strong enough warning that this was an ominous possibility.
